


Cherry Ripe

by chaletian



Category: Chalet School - Brent-Dyer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-26
Updated: 2010-05-26
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:42:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The picture had been taken the summer after she finished school, in a meadow along the Gornetz Platz from the sanatorium where Reg worked. They had gone there one Saturday in late August, when the weather was at its hottest, and had spent the afternoon picnicking, playing silly games in the long grass and, finally, just lying there, gazing up at the sky, their fingers barely touching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cherry Ripe

"Your blood pressure’s up a little, Mrs Hartley. I’m going to prescribe some medication for it, and Nurse Edmonds here will sort it out."

"Oh, thank you, Dr Entwistle!" Reg Entwistle nodded absently at his patient as he left Mrs Hartley’s private room. Thrusting the clipboard holding the middle-aged lady’s notes at a passing nurse, he made his way to his office, closed the door behind him with a sigh of relief, and sat down. He opened the top drawer, withdrawing a photograph, rather frayed at the edges, which he laid it on the desk. It was of a girl, her long chestnut hair held off her smiling face by one hand as the wind whipped it about her.

"Len," Reg said, almost unknowingly, as he stroked a finger down the side of the photograph. It had been taken the summer after she finished school, in a meadow along the Gornetz Platz from the sanatorium where Reg worked. They had gone there one Saturday in late August, when the weather was at its hottest, and had spent the afternoon picnicking, playing silly games in the long grass and, finally, just lying there, gazing up at the sky, their fingers barely touching. Len had been wearing his ring, though you couldn’t see it on the photograph. It was on a long chain, invisible beneath the collar of her blouse.

He had kissed her properly, that afternoon, for the first time. Oh, he’d kissed her before, of course. Once when they were children, when he’d met the Maynards for the first time. They had come to stay at the Witchens, close to where he lived with his grandmother. Len had only been a kid then, three or four, which seemed incredibly small and uninteresting to twelve-year old Reg. But the triplets had been sweet, in their own, small-child way, and when Joey and her friends had left, he had kissed all three of the little girls goodbye. He hadn’t seen them for a long time after that, not until he had finished school and had was at university, when Jack Maynard had invited him to come and do some work at the San for the long vac. Reg had leapt at the chance – not only was the Swiss San one of the best in the world, specialising in long-term illnesses, but Jack Maynard himself had inspired in the young Reg a desire to make something of himself, and, in doing so, helping other people to do likewise.

He had stayed with the Maynards at their home, that holiday, and had been amazed at the sheer number of children around. It was one thing to know that someone had eight children; quite another to see them in the flesh. The triplets had changed, of course. No longer little more than toddlers, they were twelve years old, with definite personalities. Not that Reg spent much time worrying about that, of course. To a lordly medical student of twenty-one, twelve year old girls were of limited interest, and he spent most of his time at the San or, when not discussing cases with Jack Maynard, playing with the kids.

He had also, Reg remembered with a faint blush, developed a considerable crush on Joey Maynard, though he had – he hoped! – managed to disguise it. In her early thirties, Joey had been a very attractive woman – still was, in fact – with a her striking face and sympathetic eyes. Good Lord, he had fantasised about her! Not seriously, not really – after all, she was Jack’s wife – but a little bit. He couldn’t help himself! In retrospect, it all seemed terribly humdrum and only-to-be-expected – he, the young student, dazzled by his mentor’s wife. It happened all the time. Why, at university, half the chaps had been declaring themselves enamoured of their professors’ wives. But this had been different, Reg had known. He had imagined himself to be Joey’s _gentil parfait knight_, her Lancelot, who would rescue her from disaster, who would sacrifice himself for her without a second thought.

As it happened, he _had_ rescued her that summer, though not quite in the manner he had envisaged. She had been arranging a tea party for her friends on the Platz – a considerable undertaking for that lady, given that it was her maid’s day off – and the stove had conked out, leaving her without the means to provide food. She had gone careering round the house frantically trying to conjure up ways of feeding her guests, when Reg had, indeed, sacrificed his best shirt to mending the stove. Joey Maynard had fallen upon him in appreciation, and though she had soon abandoned him to the baking of cakes, it had seemed like a battle won to Reg.

He had got over it, of course. Gradually, over more than one summer. But Joey was so wrapped up in her family and her husband that, as he prepared to return to his final year at medical school, he realised that he didn’t feel that usual heart-wrenching unhappiness at leaving her. Instead, he had cracked jokes with her eldest daughter, and they had laughed as Con managed to come down to breakfast with her dress on backwards – a quite remarkable feat! That had surprised Reg, actually. Len had always struck him as being quite obsessively careful about her sisters, organising them and anxiously making excuses for them.

"What changed?" he had asked carelessly.

"There was a bit of a row," Len had admitted, rather guardedly. "We all got into trouble, all three of us. Me for looking after them too much, you see. So, I decided I’d try and lay off a bit."

"Makes it easier for you, anyway." She had shrugged.

"Not so far. I’m so used to, well, not looking _after_ them, exactly, but… Oh, I don’t know. I can’t help worrying about them, even when I’m trying not to."

"It’s probably just habit," Reg had said. "You’ll get out of it."

The following term, he hadn’t had much time to think about anything that wasn’t anatomy, diagnosis or prognosis, but when his mind did take a break, he found it wasn’t Joey Maynard he was thinking about, but Len. Not in a nasty way, his mind had quickly reassured him. After all, she was just a kid. Well, nearly sixteen, but still at school. And he was quite normal, going out with girls who was nurses at the hospital, or who were, like him, studying to be doctors.

That summer he had graduated, and had gone out to Switzerland as he and Jack had arranged. Despite having spent three summers there already, it felt quite different – new and somehow a little daunting. This was real. This was a proper job as a doctor – albeit a very junior one. He had found rooms at a chalet near the San, and had settled himself into "real" life. And Len had become a constant presence at the back of his mind.

Checking his watch, Reg slipped the photograph of Len back in the drawer. It was almost time for the afternoon round, and he didn’t want to be late. If he was, ten-to-one he would see that annoying glint of amusement in Jack Maynard’s eye, who understood only too well where Reg’s mind was straying. That, Reg thought, had been one of scariest days of his life – going to see Jack Maynard to ask if he might court Len in the future.

Who was he, after all? A village boy who had mercifully been given the opportunity to go to grammar school and thence to university, who had been given the inspiration to aim high. Why should he even _think_ about Len Maynard when her father might consider him to be unsuitable for her. Even now, with Len’s love and Jack’s agreement, Reg was still afraid Jack might decide that he wasn’t good enough.

But he felt he had to know so, one evening, he had screwed his courage to the sticking point, and gone to pay a visit. It had been quite late. Term-time, so the triplets and Felicity were at the Chalet School and the five elder boys were in England, leaving only Cecil, Phil and Geoff at home, in bed, by this time. Joey had been in her "alcove", wrestling with her beknighted poetry anthology. And Jack had ushered Reg into the masculine, panelled study that was his retreat.

Reg hadn’t asked for permission to marry Len; that would have been stupid. Jack would never have agreed, and Reg didn’t even know how Len felt about him – they were just friends, after all. Neither did he ask for permission to court her. How could he? She was sixteen, and still at school. But he made it clear to Jack that he liked Len – more than liked her – and would like to get her know her better as she got older. Was he doomed from the start? Would Jack have him horsewhipped (or at any rate through him out of the house)?

He hadn’t, of course. Oh, he had explained that Len was still very young, and that he and Joey didn’t want her to be worrying about such things; that she had to finish her education. But he hadn’t cut off Reg at the outset, and that was all that mattered.

And after that, he just had to sit there, in an agony of waiting. Would she decide she didn’t like him? Or, perhaps worse, that she only liked him as a friend? When could he speak? Would she listen, or be scared away? It was hard, so hard, to be with her sometimes, and not to let anything slip. Sometimes he worried that she was too young, that there was something wrong with him for loving her – yes, he loved her now – when he was so much older, but he comforted himself with the knowledge that there was less of a difference between them than between her parents.

Her last year at the school seemed to crawl by, and Reg found himself fixing on the end of term as a kind of mecca – there, on the horizon, just out of reach. Boating accidents and storms came and went, until the day of the biggest storm, when Reg got caught out.

He hadn’t kissed her. Not since that summer many years ago when he was a child and she was a child. That was all he could think about as he clung to the rockface, hoping that he wouldn’t get washed away. That he hadn’t kissed her. He’d imagined it, so many times: as they shared a joke, their faces close together. It wouldn’t have taken much, just to lean forward a little further, to kiss those lips. And there, with the rain lashing down on him, and his legs going numb, he had closed his eyes and imagined what it would feel like – to kiss her, to feel her in his arms. His Len.

Quite fortunately, he had been found, and not washed away. He had been bustled away to Freudesheim where Joey Maynard had fussed over him – and the pleasure he would have found in that five years ago! – and he had lain there, pleasantly surprised that he was still alive, and slightly out-of-focus thanks to the meds he was on. Then, rapture of raptures! the door had opened, and Len had rushed in, concern and something more plain on her beautiful face. She had come up to his bed, and said something usual, and all Reg could think was that she loved him – she had to!

"Does this mean—?" he had blurted out before he could think, and time seemed to stop until she replied.

"I suppose so – yes!" And that was it. There it was. Done and dusted. He had kissed her then, but chastely, almost like a brother, as she had hugged him on the bed. But he had to make sure – just to check.

"I take it we’re engaged. Like it, darling?" He said it carelessly, sounding confident, but inside he was on tenterhooks, in case it was all a mistake. It hadn’t though. Len had behaved like it was all perfectly normal.

And that summer – that perfect summer! No worries for either of them. Of course, he was usually busy at the San, and Len was busy helping Joey manage all the kids home for the holidays, but every so often they had got away together, just themselves, like that day on the meadow. He had kissed her then, like a man kisses the woman he loves, and she had kissed him back, until they were dishevelled and giggling like loons.

The clock struck three. A nurse knocked on the door. Reg stood, and grabbed his stethoscope, ready for the round.

oOo

She’d been gone over two months. Two months to meet other people. Two months to get back to reality after that sun-filled, unreal summer. Two months to decide that it was a mistake.

Two months to meet someone else.

Loitering outside Freudesheim, a bunch of roses in his hand rather more mangled than they had been when they had left the flower stall, Reg was suddenly scared. They had written, it was true, but they were both so busy that their letters were scant and filled with prosaic details of day-to-day lives.

What if she had changed her mind? He knocked on the door, fatalistically ready to have the worse revealed. Into the warmth and laughter of the Maynards’ home, where no-one was ever given the opportunity to feel lonely. Through the noisy welcome of Cecil and Phil, and Bruno’s barking, and Jack demanding who had stolen his favourite pipe, all Reg could see was Len running towards him, her arms tight around his neck, his around her waist, and her voice by his ear.

"I’ve missed you so much."

THE END


End file.
